Chapter 31
31
MILA
Looking around the room, I waited while Ethan made his way toward me. As soon as he was in front of me, I pushed to my toes and hugged him tightly, but then quickly dropped back to my feet. “What the hell’s going on?”
“No idea,” he admitted.
I studied his face and saw the dried blood on his obviously split lip, but with the lighting, I couldn’t see much more except that he looked rough. “Please tell me he looks worse than you.”
He actually grinned but then grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it over his head before handing it to me. “Please put this on.”
I slid the shirt over my head and said a little thank you that it came to mid thigh. “Thanks.”
Shaking his head, Ethan looked like he wanted to say more when Nick walked into the room.
“Nick,” I said, and Ethan turned in his direction.
“Let’s go,” Nick instructed.
We started toward him, but then I remembered Sarah and stopped. “I have to go back to the changing room.” Nick shook his head, but I pressed on. “You don’t understand. There’s a girl in there, and I promised I’d get her out.”
“Already got her,” Nick replied. “I heard your conversation. While agents secured the bar and this room, I found her and took her out. She’s safe.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, good. I wasn’t sure if you could hear me.”
“Oh, we heard you.” Nick grinned. “Those little fucking devices caught everything.”
I had so many questions that I needed answered, but now wasn’t the time. Walking side by side, Ethan and I followed Nick through the side door and around the building toward the parking lot. I grinned when I saw agents had Miles pinned to the ground around the side of the building.
We got them.
Relief once again washed over me.
But it was short-lived when we cleared the corner of the building, and I saw the chaos. Lights flashed everywhere I looked, but when my eyes zeroed in on Jax and Brody leaning against a black SUV, the questions I had grew exponentially.
We made our way to our team, and only as we got closer did I notice Striker not a few feet from Brody and Jax, his eyes on the building.
“What the hell is going on?”
“We’ll talk back at the hotel.” Jax looked over my shoulder. “You need them, or are they free to go?”
I spun to see who he was talking to but was surprised to see the director of the FBI standing behind me. “Director Reed.”
“Hello, Mila.” He held out his hand, which I shook. “What can I say except another job well done.”
“I’m confused.” I shook my head and glanced back and forth between him and Jax.
“I’m sure Jax and Brody will explain everything.” He looked at Ethan and me. “I will need to meet with you, but that can wait until you’re back in North Carolina. We have a lot of shit to search, so we’ll be here and at the house through the rest of today, considering it’s well past midnight.”
“We’ll be back in North Carolina as soon as possible,” Jax replied. “Let me know when you land, and I’ll make sure a car picks you up. We’ll meet at Elite.”
“See you then.” Director Reed turned and headed across the parking lot.
“Look at what you did.” Brody gestured over my head toward the building, and both Ethan and I turned to watch Samson being brought out in handcuffs. When I heard a slap, I turned in time to see Brody with his hand on Striker’s chest.
“I only need five minutes with him,” Striker said, his eyes locked on Samson being led to a vehicle.
“You’re not getting that, brother,” Brody replied. “We got him. She’s safe.”
“Let’s go.” Jax faced us. “Meet you at the hotel.”
Nodding, Ethan and I crossed the parking lot and jumped into the car. We were heading to the hotel when I finally looked over at Ethan, who was driving. I immediately noticed his left eye was swollen and already starting to bruise, but as I scanned the rest of him, his hands caught my attention.
“Ouch.” His head jerked my way, and I pointed at his hands. “They look like they hurt.”
He glanced at his hands and chuckled. “They do.”
I laughed softly, appreciating his honesty. “We got him.”
He lifted one of his hands, slowly clenching and unclenching his fist. “It was worth it.”
“I can’t believe the guys were here,” I admitted. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“All I know is that when I came back into the bar area, Nick was there. He told me to keep my cool and that you were safe. He sat down casually at one of the tables like we were going to watch the dancer, but it wasn’t long before I heard boots on the stairs, and the FBI entered the room. They’d already cleared the first floor. I’m anxious to hear the rest of the story. We didn’t have enough on Samson to bring in the FBI.”
“They must’ve found something else but didn’t tell us,” I muttered. We both grew silent and stayed that way until we pulled into the hotel parking lot.
We were parked and heading upstairs, the team right behind us and walking into our hotel room within a minute.
I shook my head when I saw Kyle on my bed, laptop open on his lap and his back against the headboard.
“Get off my bed.”
He laughed. “You don’t really want that.”
Smiling, I sat on the edge of Ethan’s bed and watched Jax, Brody, Nick, and Striker find spots to stand around the room. Ethan had gone into the bathroom but came out a minute later with a wet washcloth and began cleaning the blood from his hands.
Kyle gestured toward Ethan. “Doesn’t look like your hands got the worst of it.”
Ethan glanced down and saw what we all saw in the lights of the hotel room. He had bruises forming along his ribs, and his eye looked a hell of a lot worse now that we were in the light. “Better than it could’ve been.”
“Any broken ribs?” Brody asked.
“No.” Ethan shook his head. “Luckily, his size was his only advantage.”
“How the hell did this all happen?” I asked while Ethan crossed the room and grabbed a shirt from his bag.
“You’re starting to sound like Striker,” Nick teased, and my shoulders relaxed when he grinned.
Striker smirked and leaned against the wall, but he didn’t say anything. He looked more relaxed than I’d ever seen him, and that had everything to do with Samson being in federal custody, which meant Beth was finally safe.
Ethan sat beside me just as Jax crossed his arms over his chest and started talking. “After you found the picture proving Samson and Martin Sullivan knew each other, and Kyle found the house, we knew we had something to go on. Kyle did a lot of digging into birth and school records. He followed Samson’s trail through college, but it wasn’t until he was out of college that anything jumped out.”
“What happened after college?” Ethan asked.
“We’re not entirely sure,” Jax admitted. “He’s really good at covering his tracks, but it seemed he tracked down his half brother, Daniel Sullivan, got a taste of the money he was making, and decided he would follow in his footsteps.”
“What did you see that made you think that?” I asked.
“Money.” Kyle swung his legs over the side of the bed and put his feet on the floor. “And a whole lot of it. Because he majored in computer science in college, he knew his way around the systems and was able to hide a lot of it, but I eventually found it.”
“Once we learned a lot of his money was in banks outside of the US, the feds became very interested in Kevin Samson,” Jax added.
“You went to the FBI with this?” I asked.
“We did,” Jax confirmed. “After you gained access to the bar, we knew we had him. That was the only missing piece. We didn’t know where he did business. Turns out the bar he does business out of is owned by a local businessman, Walter Manning, and Manning funds the festival every year.”
“That’s how I recognized his name.” I snapped my head in Ethan’s direction. “Remember how I said it sounded familiar?” When he nodded, I continued. “His name was on some of the pamphlets and shit I picked up at the front desk.”
Jax jerked up his chin. “That makes sense. It seems those two have been working together for a long time. But we would’ve never found that bar or made the connection without you two. Kevin Samson has no ties to it—not on paper anyway. Once I had that information, I called a meeting with the director, told him what we had so far, and explained that we were sending in Nick as your backup.”
“That doesn’t explain how you all ended up here.” Ethan expressed exactly what I was thinking.
Brody gestured toward Striker. “Striker pointed out we were still missing a lot of shit, and I agreed. We met and decided while Samson was at the bar, we’d go to his house to see what we could find.”
I smirked. “The FBI know you did that?”
Brody returned my smirk. “They don’t need to know everything. What they did need to know was if it was worth getting a warrant.”
My eyebrows rose. “Was it?”
“We found the box.” Striker spoke for the first time since we walked into the room.
“The box Max Skinner was talking about before he shot you?” When he jerked up his chin, I continued. “Was there money in it?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “It was better than money.”
“What does that mean?”
“Apparently, that box was where Daniel Sullivan kept all his business information,” Jax said. “He had a couple of notebooks filled with client names, types of girls they prefer, ages, all the information that would make a normal person sick to read.”
“Oh my god.” My eyes widened. “That could be bad for a lot of people.”
“It’s going to be,” Jax confirmed. “The FBI secured the warrant right before you came out of the building, so this case is officially in their custody. We left the box where they could easily find it when they search the house.”
“How did you find it in his house?”
“Striker’s like a fucking bloodhound.” Kyle laughed. “He found it almost immediately.”
“What was their probable cause for the warrant?” I asked, knowing the FBI couldn’t enter his property without it.
Jax leaned his ass against the dresser and continued. “We couldn’t legally take anything from inside the house. If we did it could create a legal loophole and everything the FBI obtains would be thrown out so Striker camped outside his house the past few nights, waiting for him to put out some garbage. Once he did, he searched the bag, found a few disposable coffee cups, and took them to the local FBI headquarters. They were in touch with the director, who ordered them to test the cups for prints.”
“Why?” Ethan asked.
“We were hoping Samson’s prints would match the print from the pizza box. If the print matched, we could get a warrant based on the arsenic poisoning.”
“Was it a match?” I asked.
Jax shook his head. “No, but interestingly enough there were two different sets of prints on the cups. When they ran the second set, they belonged to a man who has several FBI warrants out for his arrest.”
“I don’t understand.” Ethan looked between Jax and Striker.
“Samson has a friend who’s hiding from the feds.” Striker replied, his voice low.
“We watched Samson’s house for almost a week,” Ethan motioned between the two us. “We never saw anyone else.”
“I never saw him either.” Striker admitted. “And I searched the house, but it doesn't matter to the feds. At one point, he was in the house, probably brought Samson a coffee and they had a meeting, but that’s all it takes for Samson to be harboring a fugitive.”
“That gave the FBI probable cause for a warrant to enter and search the house. Plus, it gave them more ammunition for the case they were building against Samson.”
“This is crazy.” I said, a little surprised by how much was going on without Ethan or I knowing about it. I shifted my stare to Striker. “You’ve been in town for days?”
“Yep.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
He shrugged his massive shoulder. “Didn’t need to. Just needed to get his DNA.”
“That was my call,” Jax explained. “Again, we needed you to stay focused on your job, which was getting into that bar and not blowing your cover. We wanted as much on this bastard as we could get so when he goes down, he stays down.”
“Did we get anything?” Ethan asked.
Brody grinned at Ethan. “You did good.”
Ethan returned his grin. “I picked the right place to plant the device?”
“We hit fucking gold off that device and the one Mila was still wearing when she was taken into a separate room to complete the transaction. We got enough, thanks to both of you asking the right questions, to establish what type of business he ran, show a sale was made, and show that the exchange of money took place. That information was gathered in a public place, so it’s admissible. That, along with the warrant and what the FBI is about to find, will put Samson and a lot of other people away for a long time.”
“The whole time he was talking, I couldn’t believe he was actually telling me shit about the business,” Ethan admitted.
“He was testing you,” Jax explained. “He already knew if you weren’t willing to play ball that he was eliminating you, so there were no drawbacks in telling you.”
I shook my head, disgust filling me. “We knew something felt off the first time we were there, but I had no idea it was so extreme.”
“Your instincts were right. I’m glad you insisted on going back in,” Brody acknowledged. “This is a big organization. It’s not just in Devil’s Lake. The FBI will be busy tracking this for a while, but at least they’re on it.”
“I still don’t understand why he involved Beth.” Ethan asked the question I’d been wondering.
Brody glanced at Striker before replying. “The reason was in the box. We found Martin Sullivan’s original will.”
“The one that was missing?”
“Yeah. We think Samson was in Beth’s apartment at some point long before Sullivan was even released from prison. He obviously found the will, realized how it was written, and took it. Beth didn’t even know it was missing until after we met, and she realized it wasn’t where she normally kept it.”
“How was it written?”
“Martin Sullivan left everything to his son Daniel. The will stated if something happened to Daniel, everything would go to Beth. And if something happened to Beth?—”
“It all went to Kevin Samson.” Ethan finished his statement. “Is Martin Sullivan worth that much money?”
“Between real estate, his businesses, and investments, he was a multimillionaire. Beth didn’t even know how much she had because of how much was in foreign banks. She thought she had a few million bucks left to her by her father, but that only scratched the surface. We assume Samson realized she didn’t know where the bulk of the money was, and if he eliminated her, it would be his.”
“Jesus,” I muttered. “He would stand to make a lot of money from what he’d gain from the will and all the business contacts he got from Danny’s box.” Murmurs of agreement filled the room. “Do you think Skinner knew what was in that box?”
“No idea,” Brody replied. “Whether he thought it was money or business information, it meant a big payday for Max Skinner if he got his hands on it.”
“Or at least that’s the story Kevin Samson likely told him,” Jax added. “Remember Samson and Skinner were friends, or at least that’s how it appeared to Beth. His name was on the visitor logs at the prison. They had a plan, but I doubt Max Skinner ever believed he’d be the fall guy in the plan.”
“He was using Skinner, hoping he would kill Beth so no one looked twice at the third heir to the Sullivan fortune,” I concluded, but then something else occurred to me. “How the hell did Samson even know about that box when Sullivan was alive? From what we know, Sullivan didn’t like him, and I can’t believe he kept something like that in his house.”
“He didn’t. It was in a safe deposit box at the bank. He managed to break into their computer system and change the owner of that safe deposit box to himself the day Daniel Sullivan was killed. By doing that, he could change the codes needed to access it too. He literally walked in that day and walked out with it. We have no idea how he knew it even existed, though.”
“Told you he had mad skills on computers,” Kyle said. “The guy could’ve been an asset if he used his powers for good.”
“That’s why we could never track him,” I summarized.
“Exactly.” Jax grinned. “Until you made friends with Jenny and Carl.”
I shared a knowing look with Nick. “They were definitely scouts.”
“Looks that way. I’d bet they’ve been going to that event for years, pretending to be tourists, but were actually finding girls for Samson and sending them his way.”
“This operation has so many moving parts.” I thought aloud. “I can’t believe they haven’t had a snitch before. Or someone who got greedy and threatened to expose them.”
“I’m sure they were taken care of immediately if that happened,” Jax replied, and I knew that meant they were killed or silenced in another way. “Daniel Sullivan’s black book contained a list of some very powerful men. Men who wouldn’t want that information getting out. Crimes are easier to cover up if the ones responsible for the cover-up are high enough in power.”
“A lot of them avoided prosecution when Daniel was killed,” Brody added. “They won’t be able to do that this time.”
Kyle whistled. “I’ll bet there are a lot of sweaty old men trying to hide shit right about now.”
That made everyone chuckle, but the truth was I’d love to see them sweat it out. Knowing what was happening to those girls sickened me, and I hoped each and every man who thought his power and affluence protected him was taught a lesson.
Hopefully while doing prison time.
“What about the girl Nick rescued? Sarah?” I asked.
“She’s in FBI custody.”
“That’s good. Hopefully, they’ll find her parents or, at the very least, get her some help,” I concluded.
Ethan shifted his attention to Brody. “So the only unanswered question is who the hell poisoned Beth? Do you think Samson had something to do with it?”
“We talked about that, but we think it’s doubtful.” Brody gestured between himself and Striker. “It was an awkward attempt. It’s more likely that it was Max Skinner’s idea and Samson went along to show allegiance. It doesn’t have the level of sophistication and planning that Samson has shown and we have no evidence that Samson was involved in that plan.”
I glanced between Brody and Jax. “You think Sullivan hired someone else to poison her?”
Brody nodded. “I do, especially after everything that happened here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Samson didn’t recognize you.” Brody replied. “Think about it. If he was in New Hope at any time since Sullivan’s release, he would’ve seen you, which means you would’ve never gotten into his bar. He would’ve recognized you immediately.”
“That’s true.” Ethan agreed.
“Not only did you get in, but you gave the FBI the proof they needed by asking the right questions.” Brody smiled. “Well done.”
Jax pushed off the dresser he was leaning against. “Except for the debriefing we’ll do with the Director, this case is officially over for us.” He smiled, obviously relieved, and gestured toward Ethan and me. “Get your shit packed. We have a flight leaving as soon as we board.”
I looked back and forth between Jax and Brody. “How?”
“Brody’s got a friend with a plane,” Kyle explained.
“And why don’t we use that more?” I asked, but Brody only grinned when he realized I was teasing.
Ethan stood and grabbed his bag. “In that case, let’s get the hell out of here.”